Research from the Defence Studies Department, King's College London

Tag: Military Theory

Dr. Ken Payne DeepMind, the world’s leading Artificial Intelligence outfit, has released a remarkable new study with implications for those of us interested in war, cooperation, and the strategic ramifications of AI. You can read and watch it here. In short, their agents demonstrated the ability to relate socially in a competitive environment. When resources… Read More Breaking: Opening salvo fired in coming war with machines

DR BLEDDYN BOWEN What does the world of Thucydides have in common with that of Wehrner von Braun or Sergei Korolev; of the realm of the trireme with the Delta IV rocket? Much like the popular misconception that satellites in orbit have ‘escaped’ the influence of Earth’s gravity, there is a common perception that outer… Read More From Sparta to Space: Astropolitics and IR Theory

DR TIM BENBOW It is remarkable how often the role of the capital ship in naval warfare is misunderstood or even ignored. Too often it is dismissed as an expensive and vulnerable luxury, which exists only to flatter the egos of Admirals. Such comments display a striking lack of awareness about naval warfare and how… Read More The role of the capital ship in naval strategy

This is the first in a series of occasional posts from scholars outside of the Defence Studies Department. If you would be interested to contribute to this series please contact the editors: Dr Amir Kamel and Dr David Morgan-Owen. Prof. Jeremy Black Jeremy Black studied at studied at Queens’ College Cambridge, St John’s College Oxford, and Merton… Read More Air Power: Strength and Weaknesses

Dr Ian Speller and Dr Christopher Tuck Next month, our multi-authored volume Understanding Modern Warfare will be published in its second edition by Cambridge University Press. Understanding Modern Warfare is a book explicitly about modern warfare. There are many excellent existing works on war generally: this volume is concerned instead with the employment of organised… Read More Understanding Modern Warfare

DR KEN PAYNE There are two bits of Clausewitz (just two?) that have long puzzled me. The first is where he says that a statesman should know what sort of war he’s embarking on, before getting into it. In modern times, that line has often been contrasted with John Reid’s unfortunate quote about Helmand, in which he… Read More On the psychology of defence

DR GERAINT HUGHES Ever since the annexation of Crimea in February-March 2014, and the conflict in Eastern Ukraine, military analysts have debated the nature of ‘hybrid war’ – or ‘non-linear’/’ambiguous warfare’ – and whether it represents the military strategy of choice for Vladimir Putin’s Russia. The Polish, Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian militaries in particular are using Ukrainian-style… Read More LITTLE GREEN MEN AND RED ARMIES: WHY RUSSIAN ‘HYBRID WAR’ IS NOT NEW

by Dr ROBERT T. FOLEY In the summer of 1916, in the midst of one of the First World War’s most cataclysmic battles, the German army did a remarkable thing. During the course of the battle of the Somme, it created a new defensive doctrine. What is most remarkable about this is that it did… Read More Horizontal Military Innovation and Lessons Reports

DR KENNETH PAYNE In a new paper, Kareem Ayoub and I explore how Artificial intelligence will shape strategy. Here, I focus on one important aspect of that: the ability of leaders to control the use of force. Technology is sometimes seen as a threat to the British military’s philosophy of mission command. When it works… Read More Artificial Intelligence versus mission command